Free national wireless broadband plan about to get smacked down by FCC

An ambitious plan to get the FCC to hand over 20MHz of spectrum to a company …

A company that is looking for 20MHz of free spectrum from the Federal Communications Commission has announced that it is going to take the agency to court over its refusal to rule on its request in a timely fashion. M2Z Networks, which petitioned the FCC in May 2006, is upset that the Commission has yet to act on its application within the 15-month timeframe mandated by Congress.

"We strongly believe that the FCC should fully and fairly review the detailed record associated with M2Z’s license application and its forbearance petition and make a decision consistent with the law Congress enacted," said Uzoma Onyeije, M2Z's VP for regulatory affairs.

M2Z Networks' plan is simple: offer free wireless broadband to 95 percent of all American residents within 10 years using a 20MHz chunk of spectrum in the 2GHz band (2155-2175MHz). The free tier barely qualifies as broadband—384kbps down and 128kbps up—and would be supported by ad revenues, according to M2Z. In addition, there would be a 3Mbps service available to paying subscribers.

The company wants the FCC to lease the spectrum to it for free in exchange for 5 percent of the gross revenues from its premium service. Using cellular subscriber revenues from the past several years, M2Z claims that, by giving it the spectrum for free, the FCC would more than make up for it in lost auction revenues. One could easily take issue with M2Z's assumptions about how well the cellular revenue model will translate to its peculiar wireless broadband proposal, however.

M2Z's request has met with some support from a handful of congressmen, organizations like Public Knowledge and the PTA, and there have been over 2,000 favorable comments submitted to the FCC on its plan. As one might expect, cellular carriers oppose the plan, with industry group CTIA arguing in an FCC filing (PDF) that the plan creates "a number of legal and public policy problems without serving the public interest" and that M2Z should have to bid on spectrum like everyone else.

The Wall Street Journal claims (subscription) that the FCC is preparing to deliver some bad news to M2Z Networks, as Chairman Kevin Martin has reportedly been circulating a negative response to the rest of the commissioners. If that is indeed the case, it would likely render M2Z's legal threats moot.